Daily Archives: March 26, 2022

All parts of the supply chain can benefit from automation, and warehousing and materials handling are no exception. A recent Gartner survey predicts that 75% of large enterprises will have adopted some form of intralogistics smart robots into their warehouses by 2026. Here Neil Ballinger, Head of EMEA at EU Automation, discusses some of the key reasons why warehouse managers should look to up their investment in automation and offers insights into the industrys future.

Intralogistics smart robots are those designed to aid warehouses and distribution centres. Automation of this kind is becoming increasingly sought after in light of rising labour rates, labour availability constraints, and increased demand on warehouses resulting not least from the COVID-19 pandemic and from recent shortages that impacted all sectors of manufacturing.

There are many reasons to consider increasing your investment in automation, with smart solutions to fit all budgets. Investing in them now can be a great step to future-proof your business and gain a competitive edge.

A key reason to implement automation in your supply chain is safety. This is supported by a recent research article published by the Harvard Business Review, where workers cited it as the number one benefit. In warehousing, robots can not only perform inherently dangerous tasks such as reaching items on high shelves, but also help to prevent injury or sickness resulting from general worker fatigue, for example from using improper lifting techniques, or working erratic shifts.

The next most cited benefits were increased speed and efficiency and higher-quality of work, with one worker claiming a ten times increase in productivity as a result of automation. For example, Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) are a staple of intralogistics automation which can streamline product movement around the shop floor while minimising product damage and the need for labour.

When deciding what and how to automate, warehouse managers are spoilt for choice. For pick and place applications, KNAPPs universal conveyor system can supply many different areas of a warehouse efficiently and reliably. For improving workers safety, TM Robotics Intelligent Box Opening Device eliminates the need for manual opening of boxes with a knife. For those looking for a flexible intralogistics solution, VisionNavs robotics-vision guided AGVs can transport items such as pallets around the shop floor with high accuracy.

Inspektos S70 visual inspection unit combines a unique electro-optics system with Autonomous Machine Vision AI technology to provide automated and accurate out-of-the-box quality assurance. This has many use cases, such as checking integrity of incoming parts or goods, and assembly verification.

The sky is the limit when considering automation options, and even seemingly less-important tasks, such as removing recycling from the shop floor, can be automated, for example with Fetch Robotics Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs), which can be programmed to pick up recycling at custom time intervals according to a warehouses needs. This frees up workers to perform more value-adding tasks, which will result in improved employee satisfaction.

A recent article from McKinsey & Company anticipates that investing in integrated solutions across the three main areas of materials handling warehouse management, shop-floor operations and field operations may be an effective strategy to future-proof your business. For example, Sainsburys has recently replaced its legacy warehouse management solutions with Krbers K.Motion Warehouse Management System, a cloud-based, integrated system which will allow customisation to incorporate new processes unique to its business and industry.

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Increasing your investment in materials handling automation - The Manufacturer

Automation is impacting every industry, requiring businesses to seek out experts in a variety of fields. These TechRepublic Premium hiring kits showcase four up and coming automation-focused careers.

Chances are that you use at least a few automated processes each day. For example, you may program your coffeemaker to brew your favorite cup of joe at the same time each day. Or you might receive a notification via email when someone mentions you in a shared document.

Automation in its various forms is changing every industry. While some examples of automation, such as those above, simply save time and effort, other possibilities, such as robotics used in manufacturing, improve safety, reduce costs and ensure high-quality products.

In fact, the benefits of automation are inspiring organizations to quickly take advantage of the current tech available. According to the Fortune Business Insights Industrial Automation Market Size, Share & COVID-19 Impact Analysis report, the global industrial automation market is expected to grow to approximately $395 billion by 2029. This is a drastic increase, considering the market share in 2021 was approximately $191 billion.

The growth of automation hasnt been accepted by all. There are still those out there who fear that tech such as AI and robotics will take their jobs. Is it true?

According to the 2020 World Economic Forum Future of Jobs report, 85 million jobs could be displaced through the use of automation. However, this same report said that 97 million new roles may emerge as a result of the use of intelligent machines.

While theres so much we still dont know about the future of automation, one thing is for sure: It will continue to increase in use. And this means new talent will be required to develop, maintain, troubleshoot and improve the machines that make it all work.

If youre an organization ready to take advantage of the many benefits of automation, youll need to find qualified automation professionals for your team. Whether youre looking for a robotics engineer or an individual dedicated to machine learning, we have a TechRepublic Premium hiring kit to help.

These hiring kits are perfect for determining what to look for during the hiring process, and they include sample job descriptions, salary expectations and more. Simply download the hiring kit and youre good to go.

What keeps your organization running? Processes. Whether youre sending an email to a client or developing products, everything can be distilled into a process. When these processes are automated, organizations can increase efficiency and improve their bottom line.

But who is responsible for automating these processes to ensure success? The automation specialist. These individuals are tasked with developing the systems, applications and tools that automate an organizations processes from start to finish.

These individuals should have a wide range of technical expertise and the ability to write code, install databases, configure hardware, test operating systems and more.

A unique field of automation is found in computer vision technology. This technology seeks to automate the tasks typically performed by the human visual system and is used in a wide range of applications, from IoT to robotics.

Computer vision engineers spend their time programming computers to complete complex tasks associated with digital images and videos. This means they must have a robust skill set that enables them to develop computer vision models, create dataset libraries and much more.

Individuals interested in this career path should be able to develop and test prototypes, build search engines and systems, and develop software modules for large-scale image data processing, among other tasks.

True automation requires both artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). In machine learning, an algorithm is used to collect data that predicts what comes next in a process. Over time, the machine learns from the data without the need for additional programming.

To combine the power of machine learning with automation, organizations require a machine learning engineer. These individuals are responsible for designing, developing, programming and implementing machine learning applications. This means they must have niche knowledge of both data science and software engineering.

A machine learning engineers know-how should include system design, an understanding of data structures and the ability to program applications.

For many industries, manufacturing is critical to business success. And many manufacturing facilities use robotics, an advanced form of automation, in some way. To keep these machines running safely and efficiently, businesses require professionals tasked with developing, testing and maintaining them.

Enter the robotics engineer. These individuals will design and build robots, code necessary robotic processes and develop the procedures a robot will follow once built. This means engineers must have advanced knowledge of engineering, robotics and programming.

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4 automation-focused IT careers on the rise - TechRepublic

DUBLIN, March 25, 2022 /PRNewswire/ --The "Automated Parking System Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report by Component, by Structure Type, by Platform Type, by Automation Level, by End Use, by Region, and Segment Forecasts, 2022-2030" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global automated parking system market size is expected to reach USD 6.66 billion by 2030, registering a CAGR of 16.7% from 2022 to 2030.

The number of on-road vehicles has increased exponentially across major countries and has given rise to traffic congestion and parking space problems. This has resulted in the emergence of automated parking systems. Moreover, an automated solution improves convenience for vehicle owners or drivers by automatically parking the vehicles at a vacant spot available in the system. Additionally, increasing traffic congestion and inadequate parking space availability in the cities are driving the market growth.

The expansion of the infrastructure drives the marketplace for an automated parking system, along with the growing number of luxury and high-rise buildings and rising support from government bodies. Owing to these benefits, the demand for automated parking systems is anticipated to extend in residential and commercial buildings. Moreover, smart city initiatives across several countries are also driving the demand for advanced and smart automated solutions to reduce parking and pollution problems, the local public faces.

However, the rising number of vehicles of varying sizes in urban areas challenges the growth of the market. Moreover, the high initial investment is required for construction and maintenance per parking space in smart facilities, which increases the initial maintenance and operating costs of these spaces, which could also hinder the growth. However, the growing number of luxury and high-rise buildings, rising support from government bodies, and the increasing willingness of developers drive the marketplace for an automated parking system. Furthermore, the expansion of the infrastructure industry is expected to supply tremendous opportunities for installing an automated parking system in under-construction and newly constructing buildings.

Automated Parking System Market Report Highlights

Key Topics Covered:

Chapter 1 Methodology and Scope

Chapter 2 Executive Summary

Chapter 3 Automated Parking System Industry Outlook3.1 Market Segmentation and Scope3.2 Market Size and Growth Prospects3.3 Automated Parking System Market - Value Chain Analysis3.4 Automated Parking System Market Dynamics3.4.1 Market driver analysis3.4.2 Market restraints analysis3.4.3 Market opportunity analysis3.5 Penetration and Growth Prospect Mapping3.6 Automated Parking System Market - Porter's Five Forces Analysis3.7 Automated Parking System Market - PESTEL Analysis3.8 Automated Parking System Market - COVID-19 Impact Analysis

Chapter 4 Automated Parking System Component Type Outlook4.1 Automated Parking System Market Share By Component, 20214.2 Hardware4.2.1 Automated Parking System hardware market, 2017 - 20304.3 Software4.3.1 Automated Parking System software market, 2017 - 2030

Chapter 5 Automated Parking System Structure Type Outlook5.1 Automated Parking System Market Share By Structure Type, 20215.2 AGV5.2.1 AGV automated Parking market, 2017 - 20305.3 Silo System5.3.1 Silo automated Parking System market, 2017 - 20305.4 Tower System5.4.1 Tower System automated Parking System market, 2017 - 20305.5 Rail Guided Cart (RGC) System5.5.1 RGC automated Parking System market, 2017 - 20305.6 Puzzle System5.6.1 Puzzle System automated Parking system, 2017 - 20305.7 Shuttle System5.7.1 Shuttle System automated Parking System market, 2017 - 2030

Chapter 6 Automated Parking System Platform Type Outlook6.1 Automated Parking System Market Share By Platform Type, 20216.2 Palleted6.2.1 Palleted automated Parking market, 2017 - 20306.3 Non-palleted6.3.1 Non-palleted automated Parking System market, 2017 - 2030

Chapter 7 Automated Parking System Automation Level Outlook7.1 Automated Parking System Market Share By Automation Level, 20217.2 Fully Automated7.2.1 Fully automated Parking market, 2017 - 20307.3 Semi-automated7.3.1 Semi-automated Parking System market, 2017 - 2030

Chapter 8 Automated Parking System End-Use Outlook8.1 Automated Parking System Market Share By End Use, 20218.2 Residential8.2.1 Residential automated Parking market, 2017 - 20308.3 Commercial8.3.1 Commercial automated Parking System market, 2017 - 20308.4 Mixed-use8.4.1 Mixed-use automated Parking System market, 2017 - 2030

Chapter 9 Automated Parking System Regional Outlook

Chapter 10 Competitive Analysis10.1 Recent Developments and Impact Analysis, by Key Market Participants10.2 Company/Competition Categorization10.3 Vendor Landscape10.3.1 Automated Parking System Market: Key Company Market Ranking/Share Analysis, 2021

Chapter 11 Competitive Landscape11.1 AJ Automated Parking Systems Co., Ltd11.1.1 Company overview11.1.2 Financial Performance11.1.3 Product Benchmarking11.1.4 Strategic Initiative11.2 Fata Automation, Inc11.2.1 Company overview11.2.2 Financial performance11.2.3 Product benchmarking11.2.4 Strategic initiatives11.3 Klaus Multiparking GmbH11.3.1 Company overview11.3.2 Financial performance11.3.3 Product benchmarking11.3.4 Strategic initiatives11.4 Park Plus, Inc11.4.1 Company overview11.4.2 Financial performance11.4.3 Product benchmarking11.4.4 Strategic initiatives11.5 PARKMATIC11.5.1 Company overview11.5.2 Financial performance11.5.3 Product benchmarking11.5.4 Strategic initiatives11.6 Robotic Parking Systems, Inc11.6.1 Company overview11.6.2 Financial performance11.6.3 Product benchmarking11.6.4 Strategic initiatives11.7 Skyline Parking AG11.7.1 Company overview11.7.2 Financial performance11.7.3 Product benchmarking11.7.4 Strategic initiatives11.8 Unitronics (1989) (R"G) Ltd11.8.1 Company overview11.8.2 Financial performance11.8.3 Product benchmarking11.8.4 Strategic initiatives11.9 Westfalia Parking11.9.1 Company overview11.9.2 Financial performance11.9.3 Product benchmarking11.9.4 Strategic initiatives11.10 wohr Parking System Pvt. Ltd11.10.1 Company overview11.10.2 Financial performance11.10.3 Product benchmarking11.10.4 Strategic initiatives

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/huhq7p

Media Contact:

Research and MarketsLaura Wood, Senior Manager[emailprotected]

For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900

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Outlook on the Automated Parking System Global Market to 2030 - Featuring AJ Automated Parking Systems, Fata Automation and Park Plus Among Others -...

The showy science projects get all the attention in the constant quest to automate everything. That includes gigantic natural language processing models such as OpenAI's GPT-3, which can complete sentences, answer questions, and even write poetry.

For those making commercial software, there is a more mundane but perhaps equally valuable task, which is to figure out what facts a machine should have access to and make that actually have value for humans.

"We don't apologize for the fact that some of this requires brute force," says Dan Turchin, chief executive and co-founder of PeopleReign, a San Jose, California software startup that is automating the handling of support calls for things such as IT and benefits.

His software has compiled, over a period of five years, a kind of encyclopedia of more than five million "domain concepts," structured information relating to things such as employee benefits, requests for computer support, and all manner of other things customers or employees might request, culled from a billion examples such as IT tickets, wikis, chat transcripts, etc.

All of that is meant actually to know what a human is trying to express.

"When we named the company, it was very intentional," said Turchin in an interview with ZDNet via Zoom. "Technology is amazing, but it can also be dangerous; people do and always will reign."

Also: What is GPT-3? Everything your business needs to know about OpenAI's breakthrough AI language program

Turchin's firm on Wednesday announced it received a $4 million seed round of financing to advance its programs that are already in use by Fortune 500 firms such as insurance giant Swiss Re, which uses the software to support 15,000 employees in 25 countries.

The funding from venture capital firms Boulder Ventures, Moxxie Ventures, and Sterling Road, and individual investors that include MicroStrategy co-founder Sanju Bansal, is the first outside money PeopleReign has received since its founding in 2020.

The area of automating language for things such as help desks has been a hot area lately. It includes startups such as DialPad and Moveworks to large, publicly traded companies such as Five9.

The Great Resignation is driving a lot of demand for software such as PeopleReign's, contends CEO and co-founder Dan Turchin. To the extent such tools deliver a better experience for employees, they "demonstrate to employees they are valued, they're trusted, they're respected, they're no longer constrained by the things that used to make an office environment toxic."

But the work of gathering the domain concepts, years of work that preceded the formal founding of the company, is the bedrock of the software that PeopleReign claims as its unique edge -- "it's one of the world's biggest corpus of content related to IT and HR," said Turchin.

"No one is leveraging the tools we are to develop an understanding of language to do the kinds of things we are doing," Matt Parker, PeopleReign's head of data science, told ZDNet in a separate interview via Zoom.

"We have this huge database of domain-specific information and how it all weaves together," said Parker. "It's just a huge list of factual information. That's the key bit, is that it's unambiguous, indisputable facts."

It is a strategy somewhat akin to Chicago-based startup Narrative Science, a focus not strictly on automation but on the detective work of piecing together what language means in context.

PeopleReign uses largely off-the-shelf, open-source software for the rote tasks of parsing text examples, what's known as automated entity extraction and automated concept tagging.

Also: Language AI startup Moveworks expands beyond IT to finance, HR, other corporate communications

A program called spaCy is used to create what are called word embeddings, syntactical representations of how words relate to one another in a given context. The popular Neo4j knowledge graph software builds a knowledge graph of the discovered relationships.

From those tools, PeopleReign constructs ontologies that know what a term suggests in context. The term "Mavericks," for example, could be used in the context of Apple's previous OS X software release of that name. "That is a member of 'OS X,' and of 'hardware' and of 'operating system and 'personal computing,' and it's also related to 'Apple'," said Parker, listing all the parts of a domain that may cluster around a given term.

Clustering in and around each term can be related concepts, he said -- that "huge list of factual information," things such as types of computers, vendor names, or types of problems that people can run into, such as computers "freezing" or "crashing" or "breaking."

Another open-source program, made by spaCy's creators, prodigy, is used for machine learning training to understand what someone is referring to. PeopleReign uses its domain ontologies to train what's called an "entity recognition model," a mechanism that can retrieve, at runtime, the relationship of, say, "Mavericks" to "OS X" and to "computers."

Also: 'We won't have the sexiest AI, but everything it says is true,' says Narrative Science

The result is, "When somebody says, 'I can't upgrade Mavericks,' they are probably not talking about the surfing spot," explained Parker, referring to a popular destination in Northern California for which the OS X distribution was named.

"Where PeopleReign adds unique value is in understanding the domain and learning from these concepts," said Turchin. "If an employee is asking about 'airport,' but in the context of WiFi or network access, it's about the Apple product [Apple's Airport base station], not a physical airport."

"So, understanding the language that employees use to request IT and HR service means these domain ontologies can have a much more fluent conversation." The facts, moreover, can be translated across 27 different languages by finding the domain-appropriate term in the native language, rather than a simple word-for-word translation.

"When we receive an utterance in Spanish, the facts are the facts; we just have to translate," explained Parker. "If your computer screen is going to crack, that's true no matter the customer and the language."

The PeopleReign ontologies are packaged as four programs. One is a virtual agent meant to handle requests automatically. Two other programs are to aid live agents by suggesting relevant answers, "essentially to make the agent smarter with contextual recommendations that are built based on this knowledge graph," explained Turchin.

And a fourth program is what's called predictive analytics, "to basically tell you what's trending, to let you know what are the gaps in your knowledge to be able to deflect more calls to self-service."

"We have this huge database of domain-specific information, and how it all weaves together," says PeopleReign co-founder and data science lead Matt Parker. "It's just a huge list of factual information -- that's the key bit, is that it's unambiguous, indisputable facts."

Especially in cases where some new product pops up -- the latest Apple computer, say -- "there are going to start to be questions that no one knows about" because they haven't previously been handled. "So, PeopleReign will be the canary in the coal mine to figure out what people are talking about.

PeopleReign is aiming at winning customers among companies that have the typically load of 750,000 trouble tickets annually. "PeopleReign, for most customers, will reduce call volume by about 60%," claimed Turchin.

Armed with new funding, PeopleReign has enough capital to take it through next year, when a Series A may happen, said Turchin. Some seasoned tech veterans are joining in the round, including Larry Augustin, former CEO of software maker SugarCRM and Linux computer maker VA Linux; and Julie Liegl, formerly the chief marketing officer of Slack.

Among other things, the new money will be used for go-to-market initiatives such as building partnerships. One of the first, announced Wednesday, is with Thirdera, which bills itself as "the largest pure-play provider of ServiceNow services."

In the era of the Great Resignation, Turchin is betting that the work of smoothing an employee's help-desk calls may be a big draw for companies that don't want to annoy their employees.

"This is the hardest environment I've ever had to hire in," said Turchin, who is a veteran of numerous tech startups. He said his small, seasoned team is ten people now, expecting to double by year's end to 20. A big help to hiring is that PeopleReign is "embracing the idea of a 100% remote team," he said. Despite the San Jose address, there is no formal headquarters facility and won't be one anytime soon, he said.

"We will align our real estate strategy with where our talent is, rather than the other way around," he said.

"All organizations are now remote-first, or hybrid-first," observed Turchin. Without a physical locus, in an age of increasingly nomadic work, the bet is that software needs to extend employee service outward, virtually.

"Every employee just became a remote office that IT needs to support, so technologies like PeopleReign are making it easy for IT to be adaptable just like employees are having to adapt to working anywhere."

In a broader sense, technologies that improve the world of work become an important element to attract and retain talent, Turchin contends. Software such as improved help desks is among "technologies that let CXOs demonstrate to employees they are valued, they're trusted, they're respected, they're no longer constrained by the things that used to make an office environment toxic."

(In addition to running PeopleReign, Turchin hosts podcasts with thought leaders in software, AI and related topics, called AI and the Future of Work.)

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Ontology of the everyday: PeopleReign's automation of IT and HR - ZDNet

CAIRO The Egypt Ministry of Finance is working with IBM and SAP to help automate the countrys tax system as part of the federal governments digital transformation strategy.

IBM Consulting is collaborating with its partner SAP to provide Egypt with an integrated solution based on the SAP Tax and Revenue Management for Public Sector package, according to IBM this month.

The implementation is part of a national project by the Ministry of Finance to automate and digitalize the countrys tax processes and procedures: to integrate the informal economy into the formal economy; enhance governance over tax returns; and expand the tax base. The project is expected to lay the foundations for tax justice and fair competition in markets.

The software package is intended to give the Ministry of Finance a business operations platform to help streamline and automate its processes into intelligent workflows, enhance collaboration, and elevate its citizen experiences.

The package was piloted with 10 tax offices in greater Cairo and will expand across Egypt this year.

Under the collaboration, IBM also implemented IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation, which is set up to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) into the ministrys processes and provide taxpayers, tax officers, and collectors with a more automated and governed taxation journey. This offering can help the ministry enhance the accuracy of taxpayer submissions and enable higher-value work, like minimizing tax evasion and increasing tax revenue.

We are honored to be leading such a complex project that can help support the national economy, said Marwa Abbas, GM, IBM Egypt.

We are confident that the integrated core taxation model can support Egypts digital transformation journey.

Mohamed Maait, minister of finance for Egypt, said the government launched its digital transformation strategy to enhance the business ecosystem in Egypt.

Maait said the automation project is part of the national vision to maximize public revenues, and the ministry is keen to adopt advanced technology in its reform agenda.

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Egypt Ministry of Finance Taps IBM and SAP for Automation - Datamation

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As hybrid work becomes the new normal, businesses recognize that people arent going back to the office full-time anytime soon. IT environments are changing, with continued migration from on-premise systems to hybrid or multicloud environments. The complexities of diverse environments challenge IT teams to implement and manage consistent security policies. In fact, many businesses spent the past two years attempting to achieve or maintain stability in a storm of uncertainty and rapid change. But what about the future? As enterprises look towards the horizon, there is a need to shift focus from merely surviving to thriving. This is according to the latest survey by Delinea that explores how enterprises address the challenges of future-proofing.

Delineas research explores the important, yet sometimes misunderstood and undervalued topic of future-proofing. It reveals the challenges faced as a security industry and points towards a balanced path of expertise and automation to guide our work.

The report finds that cloud automation is seen as the key to future-proofing cybersecurity, especially when coupled with autonomous privileges and access. The good news? Eighty-six percent of respondents are exploring ways to automate access controls, especially for privileged access. But even with 68% of respondents seeing increases in budgets and staff, they continue to face mounting threats from an expanding threatscape thats challenging to address. Fifty-nine percent of respondents indicate that the leading factor driving their need to future-proof their access security in 2022 is increasingly complex, multicloud IT environments.

But the research points to a conundrum:overconfidence in security preparedness could lead to a security disaster.The survey found that future-proofing becomes even more important when organizations become overly confident in their security measures. Despite the challenges ahead and knowing automation will be critical to their future success, 83% of respondents are confident with their current access controls even astwo out of three companies admit to being victims of cyberattacks.

As cloud migration accelerates, the pressure to manage critical systems in an increasingly complex, dispersed and vulnerable IT environment will continue to rise. Hybrid solutions will become mandatory. As the volume of activity and risk scenarios increase, were likely to rely more heavily on machine learning and autonomous security controls that require no human intervention at all. That will hold true for on-premise and cloud scenarios.

Its the most informed, most forward-thinking leaders who will select the most effective security investments to set their organizations up for future success. The better you prepare for the long term, the more agile and resilient youll be in a time of rapid change.

The report analyzed responses of more than 300 IT business decision-makers through a survey conducted in February 2022 by Census-wide, a global research company.

Read the full report by Delinea.

VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Learn More

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Report: Cloud automation is key to future-proofing cybersecurity - VentureBeat

The Tally 3.0 autonomous mobile robot scans inventory in a grocery store.

Simbe Robotics

Automation and robotics are typically associated with multi-million budgets at multi-billion dollar companies. But as the cost of technology has come down, it's become more affordable to smaller companies even small businesses.

Outside of Atlanta in Jonesboro, Georgia, THAT Burger Spot!, a burger and wings joint with four locations, got tired of being slowed down by phone orders.

There's beef burgers, turkey, Impossible, black bean, fish, chicken and more. Then there's the matter of how many patties, sauces and other customizations. Given all the choices, a single phone order took an average of seven to eight minutes. And that's only if there was staff on hand to take those orders.

"Our menu is a little complex, there's a lot of options," said Cedric Pool, president of THAT Burger Spot Franchising, Inc.

"Staffing . . .it was a problem and continues to be a problem," Pool said. "We figured we will be able to automate the process of order taking, we wouldn't have to pay somebody to do it."

After a search, they found a solution in Grubbrr, which sells free-standing kiosks that can take in-store orders and integrate those with online orders and a point-of-sale system. Pool started with two kiosks in just one location, costing $14,400, which is about how much the company would pay someone over the course of a year to take orders by phone.

After easing customers into using the kiosk and online ordering, the restaurant's average ticket order increased from around $19 to over $21. Average sales per labor hour moved up from the high $50 range to $85, Pool said.

"Restaurants have been notorious laggards when it comes to technology. And they've done this predominantly because they've had access to extremely low labor costs," said Sam Zietz, chief executive officer of Grubbrr.

According to a recent report by the National Restaurant Association, seven in 10 restaurant operators said they currently don't have enough employees to support customer demand. The restaurant industry added1.7 million jobs in 2021, but many restaurants are still severely understaffed and expect labor shortages will continue to constrain growth.

In the most recentCNBC|SurveyMonkey Small Business Surveyfor Q1, 17% of respondents in the accommodation and food services industries cited labor shortage as the biggest risk to their business.

Dirk Izzo, president and general manager of NCR Hospitality, a technology provider for restaurants, said in cities including Denver and Jacksonville, Florida, customers cite costs for kitchen and front-of-house staff that are running 20%-40% higher than a year ago.

"If you're taking on those costs, anything you can do to automate things is a big saving," Izzo said.

One example of technology that's become common and affordable for restaurants is contactless ordering and paying. More restaurants use QR codes at the table that push customers to order and pay from their phones. This is a time saver for staff, who would otherwise need to take the order and then enter it manually into the point-of-sale system.

The cost of robotics is being driven down by broader investments from the global smartphone industry and the self-driving car industry.

"The cost of this technology has come down quite drastically," said Brad Bogolea, co-founder and chief executive of Simbe, which provides an autonomous robot that uses computer vision to track inventory in a grocery store, drug store or hypermarket.

For now, Simbe primarily works with large retailers, but Bogolea said the company also works with smaller retailers with 50 to 100 stores. Simbe's robotic inventory taker can check an entire store's inventory three to four times a day and place orders directly when items start to run low. "It's not humanly possible to scan at that frequency or fidelity with human labor in these environments," Bogolea said. Retailers traditionally spend anywhere from 30 to 100 hours per store per week on inventory.

In many cases, technology providers are offering automation as a service. Instead of being saddled with large upfront costs for equipment, companies pay a monthly fee.GreenSeed Contract Packaging, located outside of Chicago, implemented robotics to automate some particularly repetitive packaging functions, such as packing baby snacks into a box or moving packed boxes off the line onto a pallet. The company is billed monthly based on the number of hours the robot is working.

"Instead of using an agency to get a temp worker, you can get a robot in," said David Gray, chief executive of GreenSeed. Depending on the structure of the contract, the cost of the robotics is 40% to 50% of what he would pay to hire a person, which costs at least $17 or $18 an hour, not including benefits or the costs to a temp agency. "So you can really reduce your costs and get better consistency," Gray said.

While the cost of technology has come down, smaller companies lacking economies of scale still need to spend more as a percentage of their revenue than their larger counterparts. Outside of the food sector, one telling example comes from the world of accounting. According to arecent survey by Ernst & Young, 70% of large companies with $30 billion or more in revenue plan to spend between $2 million to $6 million on tax automation technology. By comparison, 81% of smaller companies with less than $1 billion in revenue plan to spend between $1 million to $3.99 million less, but not that much less.

"That's a pressure on the smaller companies where they're almost spending as much," said David Helmer, global tax and finance operate leader at Ernst & Young.

Inflation is impacting how small businesses look at the cost of automation relative to rising costs in other core areas of their business.

San Francisco-based Nana Joes Granola has been facing higher costs of raw goods and labor and is trying to figure out how to bring the costs of its premium granola down as consumers look more closely at pocketbook decisions. Michelle Pusateri, owner of Nana Joes Granola, said options include reducing the volume in bags by a few ounces, or reformulating the recipe to cut down on ingredients costs, or figuring out how to use automation for its production process and equipment that can make it easier to pump out more volume.

The company, which has Whole Foods among its retail partners, is facing a highly competitive market and while it was able to pass along some costs to customers in 2021 as sale boomed, being a higher-cost granola during inflation is more challenging, Pusateri said.

The company received a Covid EIDL loan, which mostly went to stocking up on ingredients which have risen in price, an inflationary factor that required it to buy in higher volumes to secure better deals. But Nana Joes Granola has also set a small portion of that loan aside for automation on the packaging side of production, and it might also need to take out business loans for equipment.

"I don't think inflation is going away any time soon. We will be stuck in this and having more volume to pump out with same staff and same overhead is what we are looking at now," Pusateri said.

Pusateri, who said she supports the higher wages workers are receiving across the economy, adds that investing in automation wouldn't mean downsizing staff. "The women working for us since 2016 are doing the same things over and over again and there is fatigue in that," she said.

CNBC's Eric Rosenbaum contributed additional reporting.

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Big food automation is making its way to Main Street's menu - CNBC

Jeff Francis, VP of finance and CFO, Methodist Health System in Omaha, Neb., and Amy Raymond, head of revenue cycle operations at AKASA in South San Francisco, Calif., spoke about automating the revenue cycleat HIMSS22.

Jeff Francis, CFO and vice president of finance for Methodist Health System in Omaha, Nebraska, worked with Amy Raymond, head of Revenue Cycle Operations at AKASA, for unified automation of the health system's revenue cycle that tied into its Cerner EHR. Francis and Raymond spokeabout the journey to automation that began in 2018, which went live in 2019,during the HIMSS22 session, "How Automation Can Improve the Patient Financial Experience."

Methodist started with the goal of automating all non-value added aspects of the revenue cycle, Francis said. "It really came down to what were those initial pain points," he said.

Claims status has been automated to the point that what used to take over six months to determine is now down to a minute, he said. The result has been an increase in yield, which is up by at least 1% on gross revenue of $3 billion.

Raymond brought a passion for a better patient financial experience, including the benefit of staff having the time to pick up the phone and call patients when necessary, she said.

"There's more time for patients," Raymond said.

Methodist began the process by setting up a governance committee to oversee operations. One of the high priorities was automating coding edits. There was early skepticism among staff about potential layoffs. There were no layoffs, and staff members are now able to concentrate on the more difficult claims, Francis said.

Automation has taken over the repetitive tasks. Staff no longer have to spend seven minutes to see the status of a claim and make the notification and update within Cerner, Francis said. Responses to claims denials are now automatically sent to payers.

Automation continued as the health system found new use cases in the front-end and mid-revenue cycle.

The automation has also been leveraged with the addition of Fremont Health joining Methodist in 2018. Fremont came onto the Cerner platform for clinical and accounting services.

The health system has now about reached the limit of what robotic process automation and machine learning can do for the revenue cycle.

As more hospitals and health systems have automated their revenue cycles or want to, Francis advised that the first step should be to review options for a third-party partner, based on what pain points they want to solve.

Twitter: @SusanJMorseEmail the writer: SMorse@himss.org

Continued here:

Methodist Health System and AKASA partnered to automate the revenue cycle - Healthcare Finance News

Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, updated its ads platform, introducing more automation into campaigns, as the company continues to adjust to privacy and data restrictions in online marketing.

On Tuesday, Goksu Nebol-Perlman, Metas VP of product marketing, ads and business products, announced the new automation and machine learning tools within Facebooks ads platform. Anewly branded ad service called Meta Advantage consolidates the automated ad products, Nebol-Perlman said. Automation helps advertisers set app-install ad campaigns and create lookalike audiences, by relying more on Metas artificial intelligence. Lookalike audiences are people who resemblebased on their internet behavior and other factorsexisting customers of brands, and lookalikes are ripe for targeting with ads.

Last year, Apple implemented rules that limit how much apps like Facebook and Instagram can track users on web browsers and mobile devices. The app-tracking changes made it more difficult to create lookalike audiences and to measure ads. It became more difficult to quantify the effectiveness of app-install ads, for example. In the past year, Meta has made a series of updates to its ad platform in response to Apple and notified marketers of nagging issues with some of its ad services. In September, Meta outlined how it was not accurately reporting conversions, or the rate at which ads lead to concrete results such as app downloads and sales. In February, Meta said it was making progress at tracking conversions.

This move is in line with the industrys desire for a more fully integrated tech stack that gathers all actionable data on one platform for more automated and efficient mobile growth," said Simon Bobby Dussart, CEO of Adjust, a mobile marketing analytics platform, in an email to Ad Age, referring to Metas new automation.

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Meta has more than 10 million advertisers, and many of them are sophisticated online marketers that are used to running their own ad campaigns. As data becomes harder to collect and connect online, advertisers have to lean on machine learning models and aggregated data sources, which dont identify individual users.

Link:

How Meta is relying on automation to fix its ad platform - AdAge.com